A Boeing Co. worker from Whidbey Island was among the fatalities in the crash of a Turkish Airlines jet this week in Amsterdam.
On Friday, Boeing confirmed that Ricky E. Wilson of Clinton was killed in the Wednesday accident. Two Boeing employees from the Puget Sound region — Ronald A. Richey of Duvall, and John Salman of Kent — also died in the crash of a Boeing 737 jet. A fourth employee, Michael T. Hemmer of Federal Way, remains hospitalized.
Wilson’s family issued a statement thanking people for their prayers and requesting privacy to grieve.
“We appreciate the continuation of those prayers, not only for my husband and our family, but also his Boeing colleagues,” wrote Terry Wilson and family.
The Boeing workers were traveling on business when the plane operated by Turkish Airlines crashed in a field about 1 mile short of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on its way from Istanbul. Nine people — five Turkish victims and four Americans — died in the accident. Of 135 people on Flight TK1951 that shattered into three pieces, 63 remained hospitalized, one in critical condition, said a Dutch official on Friday.
As 40 investigators swarmed the crash site Friday, the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recordings were being analyzed in Paris. Sandra Groenendal, spokeswoman for the Dutch Safety Authority, said a first assessment of what went wrong according to the black box data would likely be released by Wednesday.
Pieter van Vollenhoven, head of the Dutch agency investigating the crash, said Thursday that the plane had fallen almost directly from the sky, which pointed toward its engines having stopped. He said a reason for that had not been established.
Groenendal said engine failure was still only “one of the possible scenarios” for the crash. Other possible causes include weather-related factors, insufficient fuel, loss of fuel, navigational errors, pilot fatigue or bird strikes.
“(It) just fell straight down, and then you heard the engines at full power as if it was trying to go forward,” survivor Fred Gimpel told the Dutch NOS news.
Witnesses on the ground said the plane dropped from about 300 feet.
Turkish Airlines chief Temel Kotil said the plane’s captain was an experienced former air force pilot.
The airline also denied reports that the plane, which was built in 2002, had had technical problems in the days before the accident. The plane underwent maintenance Feb. 19, and had to delay a flight Feb. 23 — the day before the crash — to replace a faulty caution light.
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